Houston Mayor Annise Parker defended her initiatives and deflected a bevy of criticisms from her challengers on the state of the city's roads, finances and public transportation on Tuesday night in the first and only televised debate of this year's mayoral contest.

Parker, vying for a third term, joined her top challenger Ben Hall and four lesser known and funded competitors for the two-hour forum-style debate aired on KUHT (Channel 8) and hosted by the League of Women Voters. Candidates answered dozens of questions about topics including crime, transportation, economic development and quality of life.

"Several of them I think took her to task on questions about Metro and fixing the streets, and I think that's something that Houstonians broadly could probably empathize with," Rottinghaus said. "But with that said, none of these criticisms really rose to the level of being a truly damaging issue for her."

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Rice University political scientist Mark Jones agreed, while noting that the incumbent mayor's top challenger, Hall, performed well and appeared "very poised and very knowledgeable."

"I think for the mayor it was important not to make any errors and to hold her own, and I think she clearly succeeded in that respect," Jones said.

"I don't think she overwhelmed anyone, but she was confident, she was poised, she responded to many of the critiques."

Focus on transit

The debate came the day after the most recent campaign finance reports were released, showing that Parker has continued to outpace Hall in fundraising even as he has ramped up his campaign with numerous television attack ads and news conferences.

Candidate Keryl Burgess Douglas spent most of her time lobbing criticisms of cronyism and corruption at Hall, a wealthy lawyer who has largely bankrolled his own campaign and spent much of Tuesday night criticizing Parker for lacking vision and leadership.

Hall also joined Dick, a lawyer, in criticizing the mayor for what he described as the city's "abysmal streets" and vowed to make that his first priority if elected. Parker, in turn, promised that in the "next 20 years you're going to see a complete transformation of those streets" under a voter-approved program she started, intending to wean the city off issuing debt for street and drainage expenses onto a pay-as-you-go system.

Trading attacks

Parker and Hall have been lobbing shots at each other for nearly two months now.

Hall has in recent weeks launched a series of themed attack campaigns targeting Parker, the most recent based on claims that the incumbent mayor has failed to address a so-called "crime spree" plaguing the city.

Parker, in turn, has accused Hall of lying about a federal income tax lien, which he has said was filed in error and released without payment. She also has criticized him for repeatedly paying property taxes late.

Court documents show that in January, less than a week before Hall began spending money on his mayoral bid, he agreed to pay $680,000 in back taxes and penalties to the IRS, covering four years of deficiencies, from 2005 to 2008.

Asked about the issue Tuesday, Hall said he and his wife "paid every penny that we owed to every governmental agency" and then criticized Parker for failing to address the city's pension liabilities.

Parker said she has helped negotiate "good reforms" to the municipal employee and police officers pensions, including reducing pensions for new hires, but said her hands are tied on the controversial firefighter pension.

"I have aggressively tried to get the state Legislature to help us out of the jam because in fact the firefighter pension is under the control of the state Legislature," she said.

A poll conducted last month showed Parker with a wide lead over Hall - 34.1 percent to his 13.6 percent - but found that 48 percent of respondents were undecided or declined to say whom they would vote for this fall. Candidate Dick logged 2 percent.